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Whither Political Economy? Evaluating the CORE Project As a Response to Calls for Change in Economics Teaching

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Whither Political Economy? Evaluating the CORE Project As a Response to Calls for Change in Economics Teaching This is a repository copy of Whither Political Economy? Evaluating the CORE Project as a Response to Calls for Change in Economics Teaching. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/131495/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Mearman, A orcid.org/0000-0003-0601-8060, Guizzo, D and Berger, S (2018) Whither Political Economy? Evaluating the CORE Project as a Response to Calls for Change in Economics Teaching. Review of Political Economy, 30 (2). pp. 241-259. ISSN 0953-8259 https://doi.org/10.1080/09538259.2018.1426682 (c) 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Review of Political Economy on 23 May 2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/09538259.2018.1426682 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Whither political economy? Evaluating the CORE Project as a Response to Calls for Change in Economics Teaching Andrew Mearmana1, Danielle Guizzob and Sebastian Bergerc aThe University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom; bUniversity of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom; cUniversity of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. ABSTRACT This article offers a critique of a major recent initiative in economics teaching: the CORE Project. CORE emerged in the wake of the global financial crisis, which was also something of a crisis for economics. The article deploys four evaluative criteria to pose four questions of CORE which address the demands of the student movement. CORE claims to be innovative and responding to criticisms. However, the article concludes that its reforms are relatively minor and superficial. CORE, like curricula which preceded the global financial crisis, still exhibits limited pluralism, ignores power and politics, and ignores key educational goals. Despite its opportunity to do so, CORE has not opened up space within economics for the teaching of political economy. KEYWORDS CORE Project; curriculum; economics; educational philosophy; political economy; pluralism; JEL CODES A14; A20; B50 1. Introduction When Queen Elizabeth II chastised the economics discipline for failing to predict the financial crisis of 2007/8 (Pierce 2008), her comments amplified existing criticisms. Employers already bemoaned the skills of economics graduates (O’Doherty et al. 2007; cf. Thornton 2014). Wren- 1 CONTACT Andrew Mearman [email protected]; Leeds University Business School. Maurice Keyworth Building, The University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom. Lewis (2016)’s survey evidence reveals a lack of trust in the media of academic economists. This finding reflects a wider mistrust in economists as engaging in unethical practices (DeMartino 2011; Epstein and Carrick-Hagenbarth 2012). Economists were accused of arrogance (Fourcade et al., 2015), imperialism (Fine and Milonakis 2009) and a slavish mimicry of the physical sciences (Mirowski 2002, 2013). Commentators asked: What is the use of economics (Coyle 2012)? Yet others attested that the discipline’s formalism has created a ‘democratic deficit’ (Earle et al. 2016). There were, then, many calls for change. Political economists – those economists who stress the inherently political nature of economics – have long recognised the above problems and, amongst other things, argued for greater pluralism and explicit space for the teaching of political economy; however, they recognise the considerable institutional resistance to these aspirations. They claim that the mainstream of the economics profession insists on a limited set of mathematical and statistical methods or theoretical tools (Lawson 1997, et passim). These are entrenched, for instance via research assessment (Lee et al. 2013). More fundamentally, mainstream economics is aligned with real political and economic structures, as merely a reflection of ideology (Fine 1980). Thus, though the crisis presented a challenge to economics and an opportunity for change, prospects for change seemed limited. A key battleground in this context is the economics curriculum. Political economists contend that economics teaching must draw from multiple perspectives (Morgan 2014, 2015; Dow 2009) and/or with educational goals explicitly different from those apparent in the mainstream (Clarke and Mearman 2003; Kramer 2007). Crucially, students have demanded change, via bodies such as the Post-Autistic Economics movement (Fullbrook 2003); and now the Post-Crash Economics Society (PCES 2014), Rethinking Economics, the International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics (ISIPE) and others. Earle et al. (2016) encapsulate these students’ views in an extended critique of economics teaching. They show that current economics teaching in leading United Kingdom (UK) universities is narrow and tends to rote learning, with little scope for critical or evaluative thinking. Consequently, they make four connected demands with regard to economics teaching: 1) greater pluralism; 2) inclusion of the wider societal aspects of the economy; and 3) a liberal education; implying 4) fundamental change. This article explores whether economics teaching is actually changing, via a critique of a recent significant curricular development: the Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics project, better known by its potent acronym, CORE. The article deploys the four evaluative criteria outlined above to assess to what extent CORE meets the students’ demands. We ask four central questions. First: does CORE demonstrate greater pluralism? Does it accommodate more perspectives? Does it therefore offer space for political economy, non- mainstream economics and uncertainty of knowledge? Further, does it demonstrate greater epistemological caution, contra accusations of hubris made against the discipline? Second, of crucial importance to political economists, we ask: how does CORE address power, politics, gender and society? Third, does CORE make explicit recognition of its underlying, driving educational philosophy, as is typically not the case in economics education? Whether or not it does, what are its educational goals and approach? In so doing the article offers the first evaluation of the published educational principles of CORE (Birdi 2016). Fourth, overall does CORE represent change? Has it grasped the opportunity offered by the global financial crisis and its attendant criticisms of economics? The article therefore offers an integrated evaluation of CORE: previous critiques do not attempt this. We argue that CORE does not deliver greater pluralism. We find only limited evidence of greater epistemological caution. Further, this limited pluralism is manifest in CORE’s failure to integrate power, politics and society into economics teaching. These features reflect and reinforce the fact that, further, CORE promotes ‘instrumental’ rather than ‘liberal’ or ‘critical’ education, and pays little explicit heed to educational philosophy – a serious flaw given its centrality to effective teaching. As Russell (1992, p. 413) points out, “Before considering how to educate, it is well to be clear as to the sort of result which we wish to achieve”. It is unlikely that a new architecture will be successful if its aims are not articulated. Fundamentally, despite considerable investment and activity, and some bold claims, CORE suggests that economics teaching has changed relatively little. Thus, space for political economy and other critical voices within economics remains limited. Given CORE’s international reach, this lack of reform has wide-ranging potential implications. The article proceeds as follows. The next section outlines our evaluative criteria. These criteria are then applied to CORE (Section Three). Section Four presents conclusions. 2. Evaluative criteria We apply multiple evaluative criteria to CORE. These criteria reflect four strands of recent literature, all of which anticipate Earle et al.’s (2016) critique and proposals from the economics student movement. It builds on existing evaluations of CORE (Morgan 2014, 2015; Sheehan et al. 2015; Earle et al. 2016; Andreoni et al. 2016). Mearman et al. (2016) provide a parallel assessment of the revised subject benchmarking statement in economics (QAAHE 2015), and reach similar conclusions. 2.1 A monist or pluralist approach to economics? Our first analytical category addresses the approach to economics espoused by CORE. It considers pluralism in economics - specifically how curricula reflect degrees of openness to political economy, non-mainstream economics and uncertainty of knowledge (Dow 2009; Morgan 2015). We distinguish between monist and pluralist approaches. Monism here means that there is one way (perhaps broadly defined) to gain insight into the economy. We also distinguish between mainstream and heterodox economics. Thus, one might be a mainstream monist (insisting on, for
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